Invincible
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Ran is strong.


**Title:** Indestructible  
**Universe:** Bleach  
**Theme/Topic: **Ashes  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairing/Character/s: **GinxRan   
**Warnings/Spoilers: **Spoilers for the SS arc. Also, OOC and lots of liberties with backstory? I dunno. I'm not a Ran writer. XD  
**Word Count:** 1,004  
**Summary:** Ran is strong.  
**Dedication:** requested by covet on my V-day/New Year's request thread!  
**A/N: **I am not by any means a GinxRan (or rather, a Ran) writer at all, but it's always fun to try new things, and I think I'm getting to that point in Bleach writing where I'm open to pretty much anything so long as people genuinely want it. I _think._ Maybe? XD  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

You have stood and stared at the wrack and ruin of your former life more than a handful of times through the course of your long existence already, and all you can think when you are faced with it again now is that the sight of it no longer has the power to faze you.

You've cried before, raged before, bled and starved and fallen down from the weight of it all before already, and when you have to do it again now, it just seems like another turn around the room for you at most, another scar to add to your arsenal, another home burned to dust, another family raped and tortured and killed right there in front of you while you watched.

You've seen it all before. Lived through every horrible moment.

And from the wreckage you have only risen, the you of yesterday burned to ashes only to be reborn as the you of today.

You always start over.

You think that it was what he said he liked most about you—your indestructible nature.

Because it meant that no matter what happened—no matter what he did to you—you would overcome.

He couldn't hurt you, and now that you think about it, knowing that might have meant the world to him. Because it meant that he could smile at you, reach out to you, touch your face and call you lovely without having to hide the fact that part of him wanted to make everything he was praising about you a little dirtier with his touch. It meant that you could still drink together and later, when you ended up sleeping with him—messy and fast and ungraceful—the mornings after when you would wake up hung-over and cranky with him half-draped over you weren't emotional or awkward in the very least.

You got up, showered, got dressed, and went to work. You were fine.

Because nothing he did on this earth could hurt you. In all your years, you'd seen a hundred thousand things that were all much, much worse than anything Ichimaru Gin could do to you.

He couldn't even compare.

You'd known each other long enough that you understood that about one another, if nothing else.

And maybe that was why he let himself continue to be your friend despite everything, why you were the one who got to see his naked moments of nasty, wicked honesty while all he showed the rest of the world were little cat smiles and teasing jokes and friendly banter through and through.

Unlike them, he could be cruel to you because you could take it. Because you wouldn't hold it against him in the morning.

And you think that it was because of that that he let himself be as honest as he could be with you, that he let himself stay close to you even after you both entered the gotei-13 and went your separate ways, found your separate beliefs and roads and took them without backwards glances.

Because after all those years at each other's sides, he knew that no matter what he did to you, he couldn't hurt you in the end. To a person like Ichimaru Gin, that probably meant everything.

Which was why perhaps, that when you watched him go that day with Aizen-taichou and Tousen-taichou, you remember feeling nothing more than a fleeting sense of regret as you stood there, staring at the wrack and ruin of your former life for the umpteenth time in so many years.

It was familiar.

And just as you had every time before, you felt the old you die at that moment, immolated by the goodbye in his eyes, the ones that held "thank you and good luck" in them but no "I'm sorry," because he knew that you'd be alright in the end.

You always were.

Because you'd seen many worse things in your life. You'd been through them all and come out of them stronger, and while they were unpleasant, you always rose out of the ashes in the end— resurrected, indestructible.

You both knew that Ichimaru Gin's betrayal would not be the thing that killed you.

Because you aren't like Hinamori, who fell apart at Aizen's departure, who deluded herself and believed with all her heart that the blood her beloved captain had spilled from her body was all some horrible, unreal dream. And you aren't Shuuhei either, who curled up inside of himself—sweet, sweet idealism just a little bit dead even as he tried to hide it from everyone else and pretend all was well.

You aren't Komamura-taichou, who questioned everything he ever believed in, and you definitely aren't gentle, sad Kira, who shook and cried and who, on the nights after you'd passed out from drinking together, still dreamed of all those kind words Gin had whispered to him over the years, the ones you know his captain had uttered without meaning a single one at all.

You aren't any of them.

You are indestructible.

And so you take the pain of betrayal and you look at it—impassive. All you feel at most is the world around you as it begins to shift again, to shake and tear and crumble to dust so that you can rebuild it—can rebuild yourself—and come morning, be just fine. Be you.

Just like every time before.

And when that moment of resurrection arrives, everything that Ichimaru Gin was to you—every beloved and wicked thing that you were to one another—will be wiped from the face of this earth.

Tomorrow, when you wake up— hung-over and cranky and with gentle, sad Kira sobbing in his sleep on the floor beside you— you will be in a brand new world. One in which Ichimaru Gin will be your sworn enemy and you will do everything in your power to stop him, defeat him, destroy him.

From the ashes of your former life, you will rise.

And just like always, you'll be fine.

**END**


End file.
